Bath & Stonehenge — Rising Son Travels

Bath

I’m not sure what led me to go to Bath, but it sounded like a place with enough to do where I could easily spend a few nights, so I did. I opted to take a bus because it was so much cheaper than a train ticket, even with my 26-30 Railcard. The bus ride ended up hellacious because I got one of the last seats on the bus next to a guy who was FaceTiming his girlfriend and in front of two giggling teenagers. Meanwhile, most of my bottled up anger was directed toward the couple three rows up that were sitting in adjacent AISLE SEATS. Have you ever heard of something so monstrous?

My entire time in the UK people were apologizing to me about the bad weatherI liked the idea of visiting this ancient Roman city with a hot spring.

I ended up staying at the YMCA because they had a gym I could access for 5 pounds. The YMCA in the US had long ago rebranded themselves as “The Y” and despite the Village People song, I wasn’t aware of any YMCAs you could actually stay in back home. It ended up being a pretty decent hostel with a large dining area. It wasn’t until after I arrived that I realized Bath’s proximity to Stonehenge. It’s about an hour’s drive from Bath or halfway between Bath and London. This meant I could score a cheaper and quicker tour of Stonehenge than I would have managed from London.

Fashion Museum Bath

I’m not especially into fashion, which sometimes surprises people because I worked for a department store for several years and have a pretty flamboyant sense of style. I even majored in “Retailing and Consumer Sciences” but a big part of the program’s ethos was that it didn’t matter what you buy; the underlying principles of being a merchant are the same. I remember being in a study group at the time where I earnestly asked, “Who’s Michael Kors?”

That being said, I do enjoy a fashion exhibition, like the Balenciaga Museum I stumbled across in Getaria, Spain. Entrance to the Fashion Museum was included in the bundle I purchased to visit the Roman Baths. The main exhibition told a story of fashion through the lens of 100 items spanning centuries. What I love about seeing what people wore hundreds of years ago is appreciating their beauty and appreciating how much more relaxed the dress code is now. It makes me wonder what people will be wearing two hundred years from now.

The highlight of the Fashion Museum of Bath was the dress-up section they have. You don’t get that at the Metropolitan Museum of Art!

The Roman Baths

I made a point to get to the Roman Baths as soon as they opened, even weaving through the exhibitions to get to the end so I could take some nice photos of the baths themselves without the huge crowds of people that flock to this museum.

The Roman Baths in Bath date back to 67 AD, which is truly astonishing. After I got my pictures I walked back to the beginning to walk through the exhibition and soak in the history, so to speak. The museum does an incredible job of helping its visitors visualize what the place must have looked like back in the day through the usage of projections and renderings.

One moment that stuck out to me was the skeleton they found of a Syrian merchant who was buried in Bath. There’s clearly a long history of immigration dating back thousands of years in Great Britain.

A highlight of the experience was learning about the curses people would throw into the water in order to seek help from the gods. They were generally in response to something having been stolen. Roman Gods were not omniscient, so they would often provide the gods with a list of suspects in order to aid them in their vengeance.

The person who has lifted my bronze cooking pot is utterly accursed.
I give him to the Temple of Sulis,
whether woman or man,
whether slave or free,
whether boy or girl,
and let him who has done this spill his own blood into the vessel itself.

How good must it have felt to let that out?

Let It Out GIF from Meangirls GIFs

I curse him who has stolen my hooded cloak, whether man or woman, whether slave or free, that the Goddess Sulis inflict death upon...and not allow him to sleep or have children now or in the future.

Absolutely savage!

The audioguide at the Roman Baths museum was excellent, and I easily spent close to three hours checking out the various rooms and pools.

Some day I’d like to return to Bath with friends or a partner so I could enjoy, well, the baths, There were spas there that looked really nice.

Stonehenge

It’s important to manage your expectations when you visit Stonehenge. Unlike other historical sites, what makes it impressive isn’t necessarily obvious when you look at it. Only when you learn how heavy those rocks are and how far they were dragged do you start to gain an appreciation for this pile of rocks.

It was only an hour away from Bath, which was pretty convenient. The tour guide joked that he spoke several languages, “English, American, Australian, Scottish…” you get the idea. After he dropped us off at the visitor’s center we had to get on another bus that would take us to the actual monument. There was an option to get off the bus and walk the rest of the way and so I lept off the bus with such confidence that other tourists began to follow me off the bus before the driver clarified what I was doing.

I thought the walk would be more interesting but in reality I saw some burial mounds that honestly just look like giant lumps in the ground. It’s another good example of something that, at first glance, seems boring until you learn its actual significance.

As you can imagine, Stonehenge was pretty crowded. There’s a loop around the monument that tracks with an audioguide supplied by English Heritage, the charity tasked with its preservation. Nobody was allowed to get too close to it because of the fragility of the ground underneath.

I still loved the monument as this enigmatic pile of rocks. What stuck out to me about Stonehenge is that much of it is underground waiting to be excavated.